Transcript Successful email marketers don`t bore people into buying

You Can’t Bore People
Into Buying
Why Courage and Creativity
Are Good Strategies
March 18, 2010
Peter C. Horan
Chairman
Goodmail Systems, Inc.
CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
© 2008 Goodmail Systems, Inc
Page 1
Thank you for your sponsorship
CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
© 2008 Goodmail Systems, Inc
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My Five Revolutions
I have been “in the streets” in the early days of
five major technology revolutions
Home video games
PCs
Cell Phones
Windows computing
Internet
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© 2008 Goodmail Systems, Inc
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“If I’d asked people what
they wanted--they would
have told me faster
horses”
--
Henry Ford,
inventor and industrialist
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An Oxymoron? Corporate Courage
 It’s almost impossible to research the future
 Focus groups can’t define your strategy and
products for you
 Better at describing problems than solutions
 If research can “prove” the future it will have
become the present…and it will be too late
 The future belongs to companies with the courage
to “take a leap in the dark”
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Example 1: iPod
 In 2001 there were already 30
mp3 players
 There was even an industry leader,
the Creative Labs Rio
 There were standards
 Everyone was focused on
incremental improvements
 Conventional wisdom said that
the world didn’t need another
mp3 player
 Apple offered things the
consumers needed but hadn’t
asked for: style; better interface;
excitement
CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
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Example 2: Quicken
 When Quicken launched, there
were already 40 personal finance
packages
 No one asked for another one
 There were the usual feature wars
 Intuit realized that consumers were
still frustrated and unhappy
 They reinvented the category by
using the ordinary checkbook as
the metaphor
 Results: One of the few consumer
software companies that didn’t get
crushed by Microsoft
CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
© 2008 Goodmail Systems, Inc
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Five Success Factors
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Make the Edge your new center
Embrace consumers as advocates
Learn how to make good decisions faster
Make powerful mobile apps a top priority
Test and measure– but only the right things
CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
© 2008 Goodmail Systems, Inc
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Lever 1: The Edge of the Network is Your New
Center
• In five years you may not even have a meaningful .com site
• Instead, you will have multiple points of presence in the world
drawing on IP technology
• Push content, commerce and functionality to the edge of the
network
• Design programs from the edge of the network in—not from
your office out
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CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
© 2008 Goodmail Systems, Inc
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Lever 2: Embrace Customers As Advocates
 The ultimate edge of the network
 The volume and velocity of “word
of mouth” is growing
exponentially
 Consumers trust peers as much
or more than “experts”
 Brands are built by passionate
advocates who “sell” their friends
 Brands are crushed by detractors
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Look Who’s Talking
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Lever 3: Good Decisions Faster
 “Do things quickly but never hurry”
 Actively monitor conversations on the social
web about your products
 Join the conversation as a participant not a
broadcaster
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Getting It Right
 Google launched the
Buzz feature and
immediately triggered
complaints
 Actively monitored the
conversations and
responded
 Quickly turned the tide
CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
© 2008 Goodmail Systems, Inc
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Lever 4: Make Mobile Apps A Top Priority
 The best day to invest in mobile is yesterday
 Don’t allow mindless, derivative apps
 Demand functionality, personalization and
location-based programming
 How do you speak to your customers if you know their
identity, location, interests and time of day?
 New Lucky Magazine app
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Lever 5: Test and Measure The Right Things
 You are what you measure
 Compensation measurement.
Measurement drives behavior
 Most corporate measurement strategies reward:
 Conservatism
 “Fighting the last war”
 Efficiency at the expense of effectiveness
 It’s all about the data going forward
 Design measurement plans that reward activities
that build your future business
CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY
© 2008 Goodmail Systems, Inc
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“If you don't like change,
you're going to like
irrelevance even less. ”
-- General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U. S. Army
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